When one of these tumuli still intact is opened, one always sees a skeleton, often several, either sitting or reclining; these monuments, therefore, were used as tombs.  Arms, vases, and ornaments are placed at the side of the dead.  In the oldest of these tombs the weapons are axes of polished stone; the ornaments are shells, pearls, necklaces of bone or ivory; the vases are very simple, without handle or neck, decorated only with lines or with points.  Calcined bones of animals lie about on the ground, the relics of a funeral repast laid in the tomb by the friends of the dead.  Amidst these bones we no longer find those of the reindeer, a fact which proves that these monuments were constructed after the disappearance of this animal from western Europe, and therefore at a time subsequent to that of the lake villages.

THE AGE OF BRONZE

=Bronze Age.=—­As soon as men learned to smelt metals, they preferred these to stone in the manufacture of weapons.  The metal first to be used was copper, easier to extract because found free, and easier to manipulate since it is malleable without the application of heat.  Pure copper, however, was not employed, as weapons made of it were too fragile; but a little tin was mixed with it to give it more resistance.  It is this alloy of copper and tin that we call bronze.

=Bronze Utensils.=—­Bronze was used in the manufacture of ordinary tools—­knives, hammers, saws, needles, fish-hooks; in the fabrication of ornaments—­bracelets, brooches, ear-rings; and especially in the making of arms—­daggers, lance-points, axes, and swords.  These objects are found by thousands throughout Europe in the mounds, under the more recent dolmens, in the turf-pits of Denmark, and in rock-tombs.  Near these objects of bronze, ornaments of gold are often seen and, now and then, the remains of a woollen garment.  It cannot be due to chance that all implements of bronze are similar and all are made according to the same alloy.  Doubtless they revert to the same period of time and are anterior to the coming of the Romans into Gaul, for they are never discovered in the midst of debris of the Roman period.  But what men used them?  What people invented bronze?  Nobody knows.

THE IRON AGE

=Iron.=—­As iron was harder to smelt and work than bronze, it was later that men learned how to use it.  As soon as it was appreciated that iron was harder and cut better than bronze, men preferred it in the manufacture of arms.  In Homer’s time iron is still a precious metal reserved for swords, bronze being retained for other purposes.  It is for this reason that many tombs contain confused remains of utensils of bronze and weapons of iron.